the same time began to study oratory, which art was then being illustrated by Pitt, Fox, and Burke, the latter of whom spoke for the last time on the 20th June, 1794. Besides hearing these great speakers, O'Connell had also the privilege, in 1797, of listening in Dublin to Grattan and Flood. The determined efforts which were being made by the popular party in Ireland at this time to preserve the independence of their country, awoke O'Connell's patriotism, and he commenced his political career. The laws against the Catholics were also being discussed. The popular feeling with regard to them found a voice in Grattan, who, from his place in the Irish Parliament, gave eloquent expression to his hostility against them. "So long as the penal code remains," he declared, "we never can be a great nation; the penal code is the shell in which Protestant power has been hatched, and now it is become a bird, it must burst the shell asunder, or perish in it."

He went his first circuit in 1798, and at once distinguished himself as a cross-examiner. In 1813 his reputation as a barrister had become so high that he held a brief in every one of the 26 cases that were tried at the Limerick Assizes. On the 1st January, 1800, O'Connell made his first political speech at a meeting in favour of the Union, held in Dublin. He afterwards, in alluding to this occasion, described himself as trembling at the sound of his own voice. From the time of this meeting O'Connell gradually took a leading place among the political agitators of the day.

Bulwer describes thus the scene at a meeting around the Hill of Tara, when it is computed that about a quarter of a million were assembled :

"Once to my sight the giant thus was given,

Walled by wide air and roofed by boundless heaven ;
Beneath his feet the human ocean lay,
And wave on wave flowed into space away.
Methought no clarion could have sent its sound

E'en to the centre of the hosts around;

And, as I thought, rose the sonorous swell,

As from some church-tower swings the silvery bell;
Aloft and clear from airy tide to tide

It glided easy, as a bird may glide.

To the last verge of that vast audience sent,
It played with each wild passion as it went;
Now stirred the uproar-now the murmurs stilled,
And sobs or laughter answered as it willed.
Then did I know what spells of infinite choice
To rouse or lull, has the sweet human voice.
Then did I learn to seize the sudden clue
To the grand troublous life antique-to view
Under the rock-stand of Demosthenes
Unstable Athens heave her noisy seas."

By the summer of 1828 the agitation for the removal of Catholic Disabilities had reached its crisis, and at that time, a vacancy occurring in the representation of Clare, O'Connell was put forward as a candidate, notwithstanding his being a Catholic, and he was elected. At Westminster he refused to take the oaths, which had been framed with the object of excluding Roman Catholics, and he was thereby prevented from taking his seat. The result, however, of his action was to bring the question of Catholic Disabilities more prominently forward than ever, and the following year Catholic Emancipation was carried. O'Connell took his seat in May, 1829. At first he was feared and disliked, but his great powers of oratory gradually prevailed over the feelings of his fellowmembers until he was recognised as one of the greatest ornaments of the House.

In 1830 he was returned for his native Kerry. From 1832 to 1835 he represented Dublin. In 1836 he sat for Kilkenny; in 1837 he again represented Dublin, and in 1841 he was returned for Cork. About this time the agitation for the Repeal of the Union rose into importance, with O'Connell at the head of it. The marvellous popularity which O'Connell gained in connection with this movement has scarcely any

parallel in history. For some years he was the dictator of Ireland. All classes bowed to his authority, and the beggars in the street helped, by their contributions, to swell his income. By his legal knowledge and his wonderful tact, he succeeded for a long time in keeping himself without the power of the law; but in 1843 an imprudent utterance exposed him to prosecution, and after a trial of 24 days he was sentenced to imprisonment for 12 months, and a fine of £2,000. In the House of Lords the decision of the Irish judges was reversed, but the effect of the trial was to dissolve O'Connell's charm over the Irish people, and from that moment his power was gone. The Repeal Association declined, until the Irish famine put an end to it completely. By this time O'Connell's spirit was broken and his health impaired. He set out for a pilgrimage to Rome in 1847, but died when he reached Genoa. At his own request his heart was embalmed and borne to Rome, and his body was carried back to Ireland.

At the bar and on the platform O'Connell was very violent in language. He described the Duke of Wellington as 'a stunted corporal,' and applied to other opponents such terms as a mighty big liar,' 'a lineal descendant of the impenitent thief,' a titled buffoon,' a contumelious cur,' 'a pig,' a scorpion,' an indescribable wretch!' He defended the use of such expressions by saying that the adoption of a defiant and overbearing tone was necessary in order to raise the down-trodden spirit of the Irish people.

He possessed the first requisite of a great orator--a beautiful voice; a voice that could fill the largest hall, and triumph over the most tumultuous assembly, by its power, and which yet could express the tenderest sentiment. He had studied Pitt's elocution until he had almost learned to equal him. He could pass from stormy invective to the tenderest pathos. He was skilled in the art of quoting poetry, and could adapt his voice to his audience with the greatest nicety. His action was simple, natural, and suited to the subject, and his language was fluent and forcible, but rarely polished. His great object in speaking was to produce an effect, and to this end he would sacrifice all ornaments and graces. His contemporary, Shiel, said that "he often threw out a brood of sturdy young ideas upon the world without a rag to cover them." His tact and knowledge of character formed at the bar served him in good stead whatever audience he was addressing, as he knew how to play upon their weaknesses and how to adapt himself to their moods. Consequently, he usually made an impression, even when before refined hearers he was vulgar, coarse, and undignified. He was extremely ready in reply, was lucid in narrative, and forcible in oratory. During the debates on Mr. Stanley's Coercion Bill, he met with great interruptions when he spoke. At one point his voice was completely drowned by the noises made. When they had subsided he declared he was not going to be put down "by beastly bellowings," upon which a member rose and observed that the epithet "beastly" was out of order when applied to the exclamations of members of the House. O'Connell said he would retract the expression, but at the same time he must confess he had never heard of any bellowings that were not beastly. The Speaker decided that the epithet was out of order, but not more so than the ejaculations that elicited it.

When he sought to become eloquent by preparation, he became turgid and bombastic, but when he trusted to the feelings of the moment, he often soared to the height of lofty eloquence. His great triumphs were won over popular audiences. He could play on the passions of crowds with consummate skill, could make them weep or laugh, could soften them into tenderness, or inspire them the fiercest indignation at his will. "Other orators," says Mr. Lecky, "studied rhetoric-O'Connell studied man."

the vanity of not wishing. There can be none of the delight of dreaming, of daring, of exerting the highest powers of the mind, if possible disappointment deters a man from forming any wishes whatever. Torpidity is a much greater curse to energetic natures than failure; and inaction is spread over a much larger portion of life than the sense of disappointment. Everyone knows this form of experience who has outlived the dreams of youth. The wishes of love, and ambition, and adventure that haunt a young man, do not seem vain to him. When years have shown him that they cannot be gratified, he would much rather have had the wishes than not. He does not test them by their final want of fruition, but by the memory of the impulse they gave to his mind, and of the sense of teeming and abounding life they awakened in his breast.

Nor is it true that, even to outside observers, wishes seem generally vain, unless the attention is arbitrarily fixed on the one point of contrast between the end of the wisher and his wishes. No one would have been more suited to point a moral and adorn a tale, according to Johnson's view, than Napoleon. The conqueror of a hundred battle fields, the man who gave away crowns as others give away halfpence, died in exile, surrounded by enemies, and cut off from every object that could possibly interest him. Here was an instance of the vanity of human wishes. But the world does not think so. Not only French historians who have sworn on the altar of their country to devote every incident of recent European history to the glory of Napoleon, but unprejudiced and even hostile critics cannot avoid allowing that Napoleon did a great deal that he succeeded in establishing much which he tried to found, and that he changed the mode in which questions of European policy are regarded. It would seem absurd to say that Napoleon was a failure and his wishes vain. Neither to himself nor to posterity was his exile in St. Helena very material. We do not ordinarily judge of men by their failures only. Often a man is pronounced by others to have succeeded more than he himself thinks he has. This is especially the case with those who try to follow the thorny path of duty in circumstances difficult enough to be a continual trial, and not on a scale sufficiently grand to lend an artificial brilliancy to small successes. The man himself is conscious of perpetual failures. A clergyman, for example, who has to deal with a town population of ignorant, quarrelsome, meddling bigots or heathens, seems often to make no way. He is obliged to renounce the wishes he has formed; he cannot bring his people up even to the lowest mark he can tolerate. He is thwarted at every turn by the obstinacy of bad people and the folly of the good people. He is tempted to say to himself that it is in vain, he mops up the wet on his own door-step, and tries to influence those on whom he can obtain a precarious hold, when there is a great Atlantic wave of pigheadedness and brutal ignorance setting in against him. But when he is taken away, his loss is felt. Those who have observed his doings, and who have been impressed with a sense of his uprightness against which they have rebelled, are filled with admiration at the greatness of the work he has managed to do. He has given an ideal to those who had no ideal, and inspired such a belief in goodness as nothing else could have produced. His wishes do not appear vain to those who remember and regret him. When measured by the immortal longings of man, his earthly career seems poor and unsubstantial, and any view that lends force to this thought may be worth expressing.

It is quite right that human wishes should be pro

nounced vain, and that advantage should be taken of the fallen fortunes of some great men to impress the wholesome doctrine that things terrestrial fade away. But, after all, this accident of the fortunes of some great men proving at last treacherous is only an accident. It is a small thing in life, and its importance must not be exaggerated, because an instructive sermon can be preached on it. All is not vanity and vexation of spirit. We do not feel it to be so at the time. We do not estimate it to be so when we survey the whole life of another person. We know that wishes are not in vain-first, because it is better to wish, and to be disappointed than not to wish at all; and secondly, because, having regard to the limits of human powers, we may safely pronounce a great many wishes to be fulfilled. Whether the majority of men find this to be so, it is impossible to say. How can we possibly guess at the measure in which the desires of an Esquimaux are gratified? We cannot even say whether the majority of the human race have enough to eat, or have good health, or can sleep well at night. All questions of this kind become vague and confused when entertained on too large a scale; and really, although people put the question generally, they do not think of it generally. Johnson and his friends most probably meant nothing more than to discuss whether the majority of persons in circumstances, something similar to their own, had a preponderance of happiness in their lives. We must exclude all great physical calamities before we can begin to argue such a point. Of course if a man has six children, and nothing but a couple of cold potatoes to feed himself and them on, it would be cruel to ask him whether he found the balance of his lot incline to the good or the bad side. Happiness, except we use the term in a sublime and spiritual sense, demands a moderate amount of good bodily health, and good bodily health requires food and raiment, and shelter. Happiness also demands occupation for the mind.. The person spoken of must be supposed to have snmething to do, and to do it. Now of a person in fair health and with a decent amount of work to get through, the majority seem tolerably happy. We can only judge by appearances. We know the signs of happiness, and we know the signs of unhappiness; and if we see few of the latter and many of the former, we must either declare ourselves at liberty to pronounce those we are observing to be moderately happy, or we must give up judging other people altogether.

It is quite irrelevant to ask whether those people would choose to live their lives over again. They know they cannot choose it, and thus the question only refers to what is not real enough to call out an honest expression of opinion. What is meant to be the alternative? Is it meant to say—would you rather live your life over again, or use the experience you have gained by living to carve out a new life you fancy would be better? If so, of course every one would like to have what we all know we cannot have-maturity and immaturity together. The question is idle. If it is meant to ask-would you rather live your life over again or die at once? the answer will depend on the way the respondent regards, not life, but death. In no case does the question touch the nature and amount of the happiness of ordinary men. Speculation on such a point, cannot go very far, or really settle anything very decisively; but unless we are to be guided by subtleties, and aim at a degree of nicety we cannot attain, we must allow ourselves to judge partly by our own feelings, and partly by the outward signs that others manifest, and we shall then, probably, come to the conclusion that there is a fair share of moderate and rational happiness in the world, and that the wishes of men are not all in vain.